VietNamNet Bridge – The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has not approved the use of electronic school reports even though many of them are being marketed in the “smart education era”.

One problem is that the print versions of the school reports do not have the same form as the one normally used by the MOET.

Vietnamese technology firms have been keenly developing new digital products, believing that this is a fertile land to exploit. However, it seems that MOET has put the firms off, refusing to recognize these products. The firms disagree with the MOET’s reasoning.

VNPT, Viettel, Inovas and Misa are believed to be the pioneers in developing e-school reports.

With e-school reports, parents can see updated information about their children, from school marks to teachers’ comments, in a very convenient way, either on websites or mobile devices.

With Viettel’s e-school reports, parents can take the initiative in asking for information through websites and SMS messages instead of waiting to receiving messages from schools as they currently do.

Realizing that the limited financial capability could be an obstacle that hinders the information technology (IT) application in schools, service providers now lease software and apps instead of selling software.

As such, schools do not have to spend too much money initially on e-school reports, but only have to pay service fees to be calculated based on the number of accounts accessing the systems.

Some of the service providers try to attract clients by not collecting the system support fee, but only charge the numbers of messages to be sent during the e-school report application. Every SMS is charged VND400.

There is no official report about the popularity of the e-reports. However, analysts believe that tens of thousands of schools nationwide used or have been using e-school reports.

However, while technology firms are impatient because their products cannot be applied in schools, MOET is still not ready to put e-school reports into use.

Nguyen Xuan Hoang, CEO of Misa, said the MOET still does not recognize e-school reports, so there is still no standard for the products.  Every technology firm makes products in accordance with its own standards, which are not compatible.

As a result, if a firm wants to exchange data with another one, it will have to contact the other firm and the school which uses the firm’s services to ask for permission to access the school’s system.

Hoang said things would be more simple if MOET sets up common standards for all schools nationwide, to which technology firms would refer when designing their products.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Nhat Quang, deputy chair of Vinasa, the association of software developers, said MOET needs to change its viewpoint about school reports.

“In principle, school reports are the assets of students, not teachers or MOET. Why does the ministry still try to impose its norms on student assets?” he questioned.

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